[PHP] Is this kind of code safe?

[Greig, Euan]

I was playing around with various ways of doing conditional output of text, and I tried the following.

<?php
$test="b";
if ($test=="a"):
?>
value is a
<?php
else:
?>
value is not a
<?php
endif;
?>

It seems to work, ie it outputs different text depending on the value of $test. But is it safe, can I rely on this behaviour? Maybe I just missed something somewhere, but I thought I would have to use echo or print in such circumstances. It'll be nice if I was wrong.

Euan Greig
Technical Consultant
BRANN DATA
euan....@brann.com
01285 645997

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[Greig, Euan]

Thanks for that Jason (and so quick!). I agree it's ugly, but I can see it being useful occasionally.

Euan

-----Original Message-----
From: Jason Murray [mailto:Jason....@melbourneit.com.au]
Sent: 17 April 2001 12:38
To: 'Greig, Euan'; php-g...@lists.php.net
Subject: RE: [PHP] Is this kind of code safe?

> <?php
> $test="b";
> if ($test=="a"):
> ?>
> value is a
> <?php
> else:
> ?>
> value is not a
> <?php
> endif;
> ?>
>
> It seems to work, ie it outputs different text depending on
> the value of $test. But is it safe, can I rely on this
> behaviour?

Yes can rely on it, but I just think it's somewhat ugly. If I'm combing
through a file looking for outputs, stepping through multiple ?> and <?php
tags is very annoying.

Jason

[Plutarck]

Don't use that on such small outputs, simply for the reason that it's really
hard to read and follow. It also screws up Syntax highlighting.

However, it works just like you would hope it would. When you call an ending
tag, PHP just outputs whatever is there without parsing it. But it doesn't
forget what it was doing, and will pick up right where it left off once you
call an opening tag.

But it can be pretty useful so you don't have to use here-doc printing, or
escape a bunch of things inside of a string.

--
Plutarck
Should be working on something...
...but forgot what it was.

""Greig, Euan"" <Euan....@brann.com> wrote in message
news:5CEAD14A5163D211A21B...@ciren-mbx1.BRANN.CO.UK...

[Jason Murray]

> <?php
> $test="b";
> if ($test=="a"):
> ?>
> value is a
> <?php
> else:
> ?>
> value is not a
> <?php
> endif;
> ?>
>
> It seems to work, ie it outputs different text depending on
> the value of $test. But is it safe, can I rely on this
> behaviour?

Yes can rely on it, but I just think it's somewhat ugly. If I'm combing
through a file looking for outputs, stepping through multiple ?> and <?php
tags is very annoying.

Jason

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